insanity laughs under pressure
by Leara Bribage
Summary: Revolutions are best realised in the individual stories of those who fought for it. In the 21st century, Enjolras and Éponine attempt to make this better, in spite of everything. (Prelude to "if a glance is dawn breaking, then twilight is a whisper of your name".)


A/N: This is sort of the prelude and unhappy to my _if a glance is dawn breaking, then twilight is a whisper of your name._ So if you want to see the happy ending to this, read that particular story. I was inspired to write this after seeing a modern day protest gone wrong in tumblr by the dangerinlove. I'm poeticbibliophile there, so if you wanna chat, just ask. ;)

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 **insanity laughs under pressure**

Theirs is the chorus of a thousand raging daylights.

"To move past the throes of the 21st century," Enjolras exclaimed, rippled waves of gold dancing in the wind as he raised a crimson-marred flag above him, "We must once again shake the stars into birth!"

Footsteps guided by lightning, their souls exalted, "Libérte! Égalité! Fraténité!"

The fair-haired student felt his heart take flight, and there were falls prickling the universe in his otherwise calm, but tenacious mien. "We are but whirlwinds of dust in this world, and yet — let the stars not contain you!"

A hand gently placed itself atop his shoulder, which was covered in a pitch-black coat, and a fond curl formed on his lips before he curled his fingers with her sun-graced ones. Éponine, though trembling, gripped him tightly, and lightly whisked her viridescent scarf behind her shoulder.

Imperfect histories enrich her voice as she began the song of the people.

" _A la volonté du peuple_

 _Et à la santé du progrès,_

 _Remplis ton cœur d'un vin rebelle_

 _Et à demain, ami fidèle._

 _Nous voulons faire la lumière_

 _Malgré le masque de la nuit_

 _Pour illuminer notre terre_

 _Et changer la vie._ "

The forlorn city looks upon them with pity, yet the group carries on, dusk rising doing nothing to convince them to dampen the lilt in their mighty prayer.

Thebes, apparently, is bent on returning the lovelorn tale of Antigone and her faithful lover Haemon to live in a different realm.

And so it commences — the disparate, woeful string quartet in the interlude of their concluding rally.

It is as they are ready to depart the Arc de Triomphe that a certain change in the air makes the people droop like daisies on the harsh asphalt.

The wind caressed their lungs ruthlessly, and Éponine tugged his hand, the doleful narrative touched by Melpomene threatening her heart — and it makes her breath catch, even as she lifted her scarf upwards to the half of her face for protection.

Enjolras eyed her, grey hood covering his hair, and he felt it too — the lightning coming too early in their somber skies. She meets him in that ephemera, when people rise to the tide of the blearing alarms, and they understand.

That freedom wakes in the death of revolution, and the residue of their soul… with it.

It shouldn't have to be that way, then, we suppose? Perhaps, Thalia can persuade her sister Melpomene to have Orpheus scribe this story, then, driven by crimson as it is?

Victor Hugo scoffs, and in his tobacco-laced breath, he argues, "Glory follows reason and passion."

The tragedian triumvirate — Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides — nod to this hommage of their Unwritten laws.

And the palatial narrative falls, and the discourse of the republic begins.

But the radiant mystery would have to wait.

Bullets trailed after them, and one by one, Enjolras and Éponine saw the horizon narrow — Combeferre, in saving Courfeyrac, falls. Fire in his eyes, Jehan, sweet Jehan whose light steps and gentle hands never made harm, chose this moment as an exception, and struck the gendarme with his fists. Too soon was this triumph, however, as a blow to his head coming from Claquesous took his life.

Bahorel was locked in combat with Montparnasse when he witnessed this, and too soon, the Sirens called him to death in his distraction. Feuilly followed as another bullet flittered about to graze his neck, heart breaking as the voices of Joly and Bossuet grew faint in their attempts to protect Musichetta from the harsh smoke and stampede of harried people.

Grantaire weaved himself next through this throng, taking Courfeyrac, and using his brittle Bordeaux to scare the scattered police trying to arrest them both. But this too, is a swift tale, as Babet, with his sharp eyes, trifle with their breaths in two shots.

The universe does not exempt Éponine, even when her feet rarely touches the soft earth, and she trembled in this wretched air — once, only as a Wolf does — and Enjolras felt it, the shiver of winter taking his heart.

Cradling her frail body to himself, he touched her otherwise intrepid countenance, as her lids lowed — even as the moonlight drifted in her irises.

"Yours," he whispered the radiant mystery that will follow them, "is the future."

And he hears the ray of immortality — its shrieking crescendo — before it reached him.

His last word: _Love._


End file.
